Beloved by Lady Gaga and showcased at the Met, Edda Gimnes is the Norwegian designer you need to know

During a late night slot on the Oslo Runway schedule in May, a well-dressed crowd gathered in a dark basement for what would be one of the Norwegian Fashion Week’s most impactful events. Twirling around the stage, ballerinas-turned-models from The Norwegian National Ballet dressed in pointe shoes entranced the crowd.

The subdued performers stood in stark contrast to what was an explosively maximalist affair. A kaleidoscope of colour, the dancers sported 2D-like dresses with jagged outlines, voluminous gowns gathered at the waist, and structural silhouettes topped by extravagantly broad-brimmed hats – all covered by characteristic brush strokes and sketches of a Jean Dubuffet-esque nature. But to Edda Gimnes, the innovative designer-slash-artist behind the presentation, her work reads more Basquiat. “I like to think of it as wearable art,” she says.

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Gimnes, 31, grew up in Oslo around a family who knew a thing or two about clothes. “My grandfather is a tailor,” she says. “My grandmother lived with us when we were growing up as well, and she would always sew baby doll clothes or Barbie clothes.” But for Gimnes, this didn’t lead to the usual designer origin tale. “I wish I had a better story, but I am not one of those people who had a dream of becoming a fashion designer at a young age,” she says, noting that it was more the role clothes play in a performance that attracted her to them. “I used to love dressing up in costumes with my sisters and all that.”

We’re speaking just a couple of hours before the show over a coffee in central Oslo. Gimnes, dressed in a pea green jacket (“My favourite colour,” she notes), is energetic, no doubt filled with excitement for her very first fashion show on home turf. Having operated her brand since 2015, founding namesake label Edda straight out of fashion school, Gimnes’ characteristic design instantly captured international attention. At just 24, the same year she graduated from London College of Fashion, The New York Times described her as an emerging designer worth watching. “That article changed so much for me,” Gimnes says. “It felt like a 100 per cent turnaround.”

In 2018, she became the first Norwegian fashion designer to be nominated for the prestigious LVMH Prize, and the following year, Gimnes had an outfit included in ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’ at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, placing her work alongside garments by the likes of Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano. “It was such a big thing because it was what I always wanted to get across,” says Gimnes. “This idea where fashion meets art.” From her very first day in fashion school, Gimnes was “struggling” to keep up with the more traditional elements of fashion design. “We were making a white shirt and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to do any of this’,” she says, detailing how the rest of the class found the task boring. “I felt like everyone was so much further ahead of me.”

A feature of Gimnes’ work established during her school years, and arguably what sets her design apart to this day, is the apparent naivety in her printmaking. “At fashion school, I was nowhere near as skilled as my classmates when it came to drawing,” she says. “My tutor, however, was incredibly supportive. She said, ‘You have to find your unique DNA and like your way of drawing’, so that’s when I started drawing with my non-dominant hand.”

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When she won the Designer for Tomorrow award during Berlin Fashion Week in 2016, receiving mentorship from the late creative director of Lanvin, Alber Elbaz, he recognised Gimnes as a diamond that should stay in the rough. “He did so much more than he had to do,” Gimnes says. “I remember he said: ‘One of the best things about you, Edda, is that you didn’t know how to do things. Because if you had known it, you would never have done it the way you did.’”

Since being showcased at the Met, Gimnes’ pieces have been bought by Norway’s Nasjonalmuseet and she recently staged her first solo exhibition at Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art in Lillestrøm. To Gimnes, looking back, it is “very fun to think of your mistakes and imperfections that have been super important” in creating her DNA. Especially considering the pieces purchased by these renowned art establishments. “Specifically because [the Nasjonalmuseet] bought and exhibited the silhouette I made in school. When everything went wrong. The digital printing was too large. It was supposed to be a mini skirt,” she says of the black and white paper doll dress. “That’s why I think it is fun because this dress where everything went wrong has now been both in the Met and at the Nasjonalmuseet. All just because I didn’t know how to do things.”